Pierre Vs Broglio - USCCB War with the Vatican Accelerates

My recent article in the Catholic Herald - See here - was subject to some editing! A paragraph which juxtaposed the promotion of Aparecida by Cardinal Pierre with the stats for Catholic disaffiliation was not included. Here is the full text with links for reference:

Recently the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) gathered from November 13-16 for their Fall Plenary Assembly in Baltimore.

There seem to have been two main stories which have emerged from this event. One is the continuing insistence on the pre-eminence of abortion: U.S. bishops approved a voting guide affirming abortion the ‘preeminent priority’, despite resistance from Pope Francis's favoured US prelates, Cardinals Tobin, McElroy and Cupich, who have repeatedly attempted to overturn this.

The second story is the open clash between Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the U.S. Military Services, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, and the papal nuncio Cardinal Christophe Pierre who, two weeks prior to the conference, gave an interview in America Magazine where he made a number of rather stark criticisms of the Catholic Church in the USA.

His remarks included an interesting emphasis on the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean commonly known as the Aparecida Conference. This took place in May 2007 in the city of Aparecida, Brazil and aimed to address various pastoral challenges facing the Church in Latin America and the Caribbean as well as to provide guidance for the Church's mission in the region. The document produced at the conference is known as the "Aparecida Document" or the "Final Document of Aparecida" and it emphasises social justice, advocating for a preferential option for the poor, and addressing issues of inequality and poverty, all themes which were later taken up in Pope Francis' first Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (2013). Additionally, the Pope has frequently hearkened back to the document throughout his pontificate: Four months after Pope Francis was elected, he said in Aparecida that the “Conference was a great moment of Church. It can truly be said that the Aparecida Document was born of this interplay between the labours of the Bishops and the simple faith of the pilgrims, under Mary’s maternal protection.”

The Pope's appreciation of this text has also been remarked on by others. Diego Fares, a board member of the semi-official Vatican journal La Civilta Cattolica, wrote in 2017 that Aparecida is the foundation for the approach and perspectives of the Francis pontificate.

Papal biographer Austen Ivereigh wrote in 2015 the Aparecida document “underlies the Francis program,” and in 2018 that the pope has drawn from the document a “vision...of how you evangelize a world in flux.”

In his interview with America, the nuncio suggested that a majority of US bishops were ignorant what was going on "in their own continent", and stated “I was astounded that many of the bishops didn’t know what had happened in Aparecida. They did not know that Evangelii Gaudium, the first document of Pope Francis, was rooted in Aparecida.” The nuncio explained that this document constituted a new pastoral approach to evangelisation which has become necessary because the church and society have changed, meaning the faith is not being transmitted through the culture as in the past, therefore news means of transmission have become necessary.

Cardinal Pierre stated that this societal change was particularly evident in the United States, where, he said, "almost nobody comes [to church] anymore". 

In his presidential address on Tuesday, Archbishop Broglio clearly took exception to this interpretation stating that the bishops “strive to meet people and find ways to invite them to participate in the life of the community of faith.”

He pointed to ways in which the U.S. Church is evangelising, listing specific ministries including Evangelical Catholic, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), Formed, Net Ministries, and Reach More. 

Cardinal Pierre had said that religious sisters “have disappeared,” and “seminaries are now empty.” but given the reality that a number of U.S. Seminaries are actually at capacity, one has to wonder where he  is actually drawing this information from?

It is also interesting that the latest statistics from South America demonstrate a broad capitulation of Catholicism to Protestant denominations. In nearly every country surveyed, the Catholic Church has experienced net losses from religious switching, as many Latin Americans have joined evangelical Protestant churches or rejected organized religion altogether. For example, roughly one-in-four Nicaraguans, one-in-five Brazilians and one-in-seven Venezuelans are former Catholics.

Cardinal Pierre's consistent repetition of Pope Francis' every wish may well have resulted in a red hat (he was raised to the cardinalate in September), but we know that U.S. donations to Rome have suffered drastically since the Argentine Pontiff started a war of words with the Church in the U.S. In 2018, the US bishops were shocked when an instruction to delay consideration of a new ‘Code of Conduct’ for bishops on child abuse, came directly from the Holy See. The next year saw the nuncio appearing to attack the USCCB for not reflecting the Pope's priorities. 

The rift shows no sign of healing, with Pope Francis finishing his most recent Papal document, Laudate Deum with these words:

"If we consider that emissions per individual in the United States are about two times greater than those of individuals living in China, and about seven times greater than the average of the poorest countries, we can state that a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model would have a significant long-term impact. As a result, along with indispensable political decisions, we would be making progress along the way to genuine care for one another."

So U.S.A. bad, China good.

Pope Francis has also just removed his second bishop, a US bishop, without trial or reason, actions which are virtually without precedent in the Church. I could not help but be reminded of the words of Cicero “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.” Except Francis does not even allow his enemies justice. One is left wondering How Pope Francis can be the supreme legislator of the Church if he has no regard for the law?

And what about the twenty or so seminarians in Tyler, Texas? How must they be feeling at the moment? Bishop Bonny endorses killing the innocent and is not removed, or even sanctioned. Bishop Wiesemann authorises same-sex blessings, directly contradicting the DDF but he is not removed. Bishop Strickland is removed and no one is even told why.